As I read I couldn't help but assume that the addition of spices, or the use of wine, sugar, and brandy might have best served to make some of the recipes more palatable. But then something caught my eye that all the cinnamon, saffron, and distillation could not possibly conceal. To put it lightly, it was, well, poo. Precisely, for smallpox, "a sheep's dung, cleane picked". Clearly you would want to make sure you were getting pure, uncontaminated crap. The recipe goes on to instruct the user to mix a handful of the stuff into a pint of white wine, "mash it well" and after leaving it to stand a full night, to serve a spoonful or two at a time. But wait, there's more! A note tucked into the margin recommends this smelly recipe for gout and jaundice. Fecal wine, if you will: good for what ails you.

Southeast Iowa cattle herd thriving on sawdust-based feed
The Gazette
He first tumbled to the idea of feeding them sawdust after observing cows eating sawdust that had washed into their pasture from an Illinois paper mill. Batey said he deduced that something happened in the mill to turn an otherwise indigestible substance into palatable food. In the late 1970s, when hay and pasture were scarce, Batey said he began experiments to duplicate that process.
"I soaked the sawdust in nitric acid to break down the bond between the cellulose and lignin and cooked the mash in a big stainless steel vessel," he said.